On the movements of respiration in disease, and on the use of a chest-measurer / by Francis Sibson ; communicated by Dr. Hodgkin.

  • Sibson, F. (Francis), 1814-1876.
Date:
[1848]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the movements of respiration in disease, and on the use of a chest-measurer / by Francis Sibson ; communicated by Dr. Hodgkin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    / • ' While the thoracic set of ribs approach each other, their cartilages ascend and the inter-cartilaginous portions of their internal intercostal muscles act during inspiration * all expiratory, and that the inter-cartilaginous muscles are inspiratory. —(Haller de Respiratione. Opuscula Anatomica, pp. 50. 92.) Of this machine, Haller says, “ Ponit nimirum cl. auctor machinae suae costam utramque aeque mohilem esse. Sed hujus modi costas deus nobis non dedit.” In opposition to Hamberger, Haller observed that he had overlooked, among other things, the difference of mobility in different ribs—the second rib being five times more moveable than the first, and so on ; and he showed, from experiment, that during extreme inspiration the space between the first and second ribs diminished from -85 in. to ’63 in. ; and on extreme expiration it again increased from '63 to *89 (p.52). He also showed that the ribs rotated on themselves, the lower edge moving outwards (p. 126). That the external intercostal and the inter-cartilaginous muscles were inspiratory, he agreed with Hamberger; hut he differed altogether with regard to the internal intercostals, which he observed to be inspiratory in the superior intercostal spaces, especially in the first, in many experiments carefully conducted. He noticed that, below, the internal intercostals scarcely acted; but he laid it down as a ride that the internal and external intercostals combine to expand the chest during inspiration, thus agreeing with Mayow. In this controversy both were right and both were wrong. Each was right in what he observed; but he did not observe the whole of the com- plex respiratory apparatus. Hamberger was right as to the lower ribs, for they diverge dui-ing inspiration. Haller as to the upper ribs, for they then converge. Hamberger, with Bayle, Fabricius, and Hoadley, was right in part, as to the separate functions of the outer and inner inter- costals, the external being inspiratory, the internal expiratory throughout, behind and between the intermediate and adjoining ribs, at the side in man and the other mammalia, and throughout in reptiles. Haller was right in stating that the internal and external intercostals acted together in the upper intercostal spaces. Dr. Reid, in an admirable article on respiration (Cyclopaedia of Ana- tomy and Physiology, vol. iv. p. 333), says, the two lower ribs descend during inspiration. I observe that the lowest is stationai’y, the eleventh ascends, and both move backwards. From this relative motion of the two lowest ribs, whether on Dr. Reid’s view or mine, the lowest external intercostal must be expiratory. I imagine that Dr. Hutchinson’s machine (which is like diagrams in Hoadley’s, Bernoulli’s and Monroe’s works, and in my own paper) re- sembles Hamberger’s, and that, like Hamberger, in acknowledging partial truth he has been led into partial error. * “The cartilaginous portions” “of the second, third, fourth, and fifth